EDUCATION: Winter is the perfect time for indoor early literacy!

Brrr! The mercury may have dropped and it’s too chilly for hours of outdoor play at the moment, but you all know how much we love a little sneaky early literacy… and winter is the perfect time!

Language and literacy development is instrumental at home, particularly when school is out. By getting involved with your kids in games, activities and craft you’ll be aiding in their motor skill development, building better language skills and fostering their creativity and imagination.

Though it’s easy to stick on the TV, or hand out the iPad, grab your couch blankets as here’s some super-easy things to kids motivated, engaged and learning!

Go on a scavenger hunt

Write down a list of items in the house and get the kids to go on a scavenger hunt. Once they have completed they could then create their own lists (practice writing skills) and challenge each other. This is a great way to keep them entertained, whilst thinking logically and strategically.

Sing and dance

You don’t need a karaoke machine or dance mat. Get them to sing their favourite songs into a hairbrush and make up dance moves. Kinderling Kids Radio is a free music station carefully curated for young children. There are all kinds of mix tapes, nursery rhymes and programs for hours of entertainment.

Have a create station

Keep old boxes, cardboard tubes, magazines and let your kids get creative. Set a theme and see if they can build things that match. For example: Star Wars – can they build an R2D2, or Space Station? Can they build a marble run or a family board game?

Educational websites

Use your local libraries website. There are stacks of great sites linked to the library site that you can access with your library card, which aid in literacy and numeracy development, you can even learn to code!

Brick Masters challenge

Pull out the building blocks and set daily challenges for different builds. Chat about what you build, have the kids write instructions on how they built them so a sibling can build it again.

Put on a puppet show

Make sock or paper bag puppets and help the kids to put on a show. They can write the script, create a stage and set, or simply stick socks on their hands and have them chat!

Indoor obstacle course

Build an indoor or outdoor obstacle course and challenge them to a Kids Ninja game.

Play a board game

Bust out the board games for a family games night! If you don’t have any games at home, head to your local library, which always has toys for loan. There’s Monopoly, Scrabble, Connect Four – all the classics are stocked.

Hold a family book club

All family members read the same book, or read the book to children that can’t read yet, then curl up together and discuss it. Ask leading questions such as “What is the best thing you like about the character?” “If you were the character what would you have done instead?”

Written by

Angela Sutherland

After spending over 20 years on the editorial desks of some the leading magazine publishing houses of London and Sydney, Angela swapped the city frenzy for a Queensland sea change. Now owner and editor of Kids on the Coast and Kids in the City, she loves spending her days documenting and travelling the crazy road of family life alongside every mum and dad.

When she’s not at her desk buried in magazine stories, you’ll often find her entrenched in a heated game of beach cricket, or being utterly outrun by her inventive seven-year-old and rambunctious threenager.